Double Decker Artist Profile: Kristen Ley

 
Food, music, and the arts will take center stage at the 19th annual Oxford Double Decker Arts Festival presented by C Spire on April 25-26, 2014. The festival brings together visitors and residents alike for a celebration of music, food, and the arts held on the picturesque Courthouse Square.
Many talented artists apply for booth space each year at the festival. One of this year’s art vendors will be Kristen Ley.
Dressing up as an artist at her kindergarten career day was the first step Ley took in the direction of being an artist as a profession. She says she knew at an early age what creating art and beautiful things meant. Both her grandmothers were avid seamstresses and craft gurus. Ley grew up loving hands-on projects and anything that involved paint.
After completing her high-school AP art class, Ley went on to Mississippi State University to study art with an emphasis in graphic design. After graduation in 2007, Ley opened Cultigraphic Creative with fellow MSU classmate Catherine Yerger.
In 2011, Ley purchased a 1925 10 x 15 Chandler + Price from Lexington, Kentucky and opened Jackson-based Thimblepress. The name was derived from her childhood, now continued on to adulthood, collection of thimbles from her travels. Every time she traveled to a new state she got a thimble to mark her visit. A few of them have broken from moving different places, but she still keeps her collection in her office.
Thimblepress is a letterpress studio, an art studio, sewing studio, design studio, woodworking studio, and more.
Visit Ley online at ThimblePress.com.
— Tad Wilkes, tad.wilkes@hottytoddy.com